Bruce On Games » News analysis and background

I have a new job!

Bruce — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 09:26:32 +0000

Industry veteran marketeer joins smartphone app startup Kwalee

From opening one of the world’s first computer stores in 1978 to writing hundreds of articles for his popular Bruce on Games blog Bruce Everiss has spent most of his lifetime looking after the needs of consumers at the very sharp end of home entertainment technology, with many great success stories along the way.

Now Bruce has joined smartphone app startup Kwalee ( http://kwalee.com/ ) in Leamington Spa. With company founder and CEO David Darling he is helping to form the core strategic management team of the business. As Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) he will be responsible for all of Kwalee’s marketing functions and has already had considerable input into defining the brand and the strategic direction of the business.

David Darling is delighted to have Bruce on board: “I have worked with Bruce extensively over many years and we have had a lot of great successes together. Bruce is an original thinker with a long history of achievement. His strategic input is based on unmatched experience and understanding, yet he is equally happy to roll his sleeves up and apply himself to the hands on graft that a start up like Kwalee entails.”

Bruce is ready for the challenge: “This must be the best job in the world for someone with my skillset, the opportunities afforded by the app market and Kwalee’s approach to it are boundless. We are seeking to positively differentiate the company and its products so as to bring our customers very special experiences. Over the coming months I look forward to like minded people joining the team, exciting times lie ahead.”

Bruce’s appointment fills just one of many key positions available as the company grows rapidly to become an interesting and exciting player in the app market.

ends

further information: press@kwalee.com

phone 01926 886506

Goodbye Apple. Goodbye Nokia

Bruce — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 12:52:46 +0000

As predicted here smartphones have grown exponentially in usage so that they are now the dominant internet device for large swathes of the world’s population. Certainly their arrival has acted as the mechanism that has facilitated the uprisings in the Arab world. And of course mobile phones are the most used video gaming devices on earth by a substantial margin.

Many many years ago (in 1978) I opened one of the first computer stores in the world, Microdigital in Liverpool. I sold Apple computers and even visited the then rather small Apple facility in Cupertino, California where I was offered the UK distributorship. So I have been a follower of Apple since most people didn’t even know that they existed. And I saw them grow to become the dominant supplier of personal computers in the world, until Bill Gates came along and destroyed their party, relegating Apple to the role of bit player.

Apple’s weakness then was that they designed and made the computer and they also designed and made the operating system. They lived inside a patent and copyright protected walled garden. Then Microsoft came along with an operating system (which was not as good as the Apple one) that any manufacturer could use on their computers. So suddenly Apple were competing against lots of hardware companies, each of whom was also competing against the others. And Apple lost, principally because they were vastly too expensive compared to the Microsoft based computers which had prices honed in the furnace of competition.

And now we see history repeating itself. But this time they are being destroyed by Brin and Page. Once again Apple has created a walled garden with their iPhone and iPad devices, once again they came to dominate the market and once again competition between lots of manufacturers using an operating system from a third party is destroying their business model. Currently the iPhone is the sixth best selling smartphone in the UK, the top five all use the Android operating system. But the reason they are beating Apple is not because Android is better, it is because Android phones are cheaper, honed in the furnace of competition.

Apple aren’t going to die just yet, the upcoming iPad 2 and the next iPhone will sell well off pure momentum. But the writing is on the wall, unless they radically change their business model Apple will soon fall back to become, at best, a niche player. Exactly as they did with personal computers.

Which brings us neatly to Nokia. Throughout the short history of the mobile phone they have been the number one dominant supplier of handsets by giving the customer what the customer wanted. But when it came to smartphones they lost their way completely. They too went for a walled garden with two different proprietory operating systems (Symbian and Maemo). And they thought that smartphones were for “business” and not for people. So their market share collapsed.

Now they are in crisis mode and with new management in place have made one of the most stupid strategic decisions I have ever seen. Quite simply they have chosen Microsoft as strategic partner for their smartphone operating system. Now I am not saying that there is anything wrong with Windows Phone 7, it is just that it is extremely strange for a hardware manufacturer to lock their future into that of a piece of software from another company. Nokia would be far better off being operating system agnostic. They should offer their customers a choice of operating system, then they would be back at what they used to be good at, giving the customer what the customer wants.

So I can’t see Nokia competing with the likes of HTC, who do as I suggest and back all the main horses, which means they are guaranteed to win. With the Microsoft alliance Nokia are pretty much removing their ability to compete on level terms with other hardware manufacturers. It does not look good.

A bit of news analysis

Bruce — Wed, 12 Jan 2011 12:08:58 +0000

After nearly 30 years the unholy Wintel alliance is over. Microsoft have finally realised that there are other processors in the world and have embraced the ARM chip. Superficially this is because ARM processors are far better suited to mobile devices than Intel processors, which is why they feature in portable gaming devices. But there is far more to it than that. Vastly more ARM processors are made every day than Intel processors and they are very easily embedded into other chips and into all sorts of devices. With this move we have the possibility of Microsoft software running on anything with a screen, which these days is a lot of things. Initially Microsoft will go for the low hanging fruit but you can see that the potential for mission creep is immense.

There is lots of bad news in video game retail with many shops now closing and the retail companies in big trouble, something predicted a long time ago on here. I really don’t see any future role for a bricks and mortar video game retailer. Currently they are kept afloat by secondhand sales but this has incensed the publishers who are doing everything in their power to destroy this business model. Supermarkets will continue to sell gaming products for far longer because of the impulse purchase of putting a game into your trolley and because their overheads can be amortized across many thousands of product lines.

Android smartphone sales have caught up with iPhone sales. Another inevitability forecast on here. Apple are in trouble, they are a marketing company who sell a customer experience whilst lagging behind on the technology. Their late adoption of OLED displays and the lack of camera in the iPad being just a couple of examples. Now they have lots of manufacturers marketing Android products, which are often better specified, competing against them. The time has come for a massive technical upgrade of their entire mobile product range. And they need to be more price competitive too.

Just 43 file sharing websites have 53 billion visits per year between them in 2010. If people can steal and get away with it then mostly they will. As a result many industries, from music to porn, are in tatters. Now, with eReaders, the book industry is headed the same way. In the games industry we are lucky because consoles are fairly effective anti piracy dongles and because server based games are too complex for the casual thief to copy. But the lesson must be that if you are going to develop any game it is essential that you have the means to prevent it being stolen by the masses, because if you don’t you are wasting your time.

Games in education. I have beaten the drum about this on here. The fundamental gaming model makes video gaming the perfect educational tool, far better than teachers who are flawed as a mechanism in many ways. The classroom is outdated and at long last more people in key positions are starting to realise it. Expect to hear a lot more about this in the coming year.

Facebook is not the be all of social networking as the success of Quora and Chatroulette have proven. As social networking and games often end up being the same thing this is pretty important. If someone bright was creating a Facebook replacement they could come up with a far better product. Just look at how clunky Facebook is with video, for instance. And how limited the forums are within it for making new friends.

Guy Kewney, a legend

Bruce — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 08:40:33 +0000

In the early hours of this morning Guy Kewney died, from cancer, at his home in London. I have written about Guy before, as a journalist he was the colossus who oversaw the birth of home computing in Britain. Everything that happened here: Sinclair, Amstrad, Eidos, Rare, ARM, and so much more, only happened because of the foundations laid by Guy.

In the mid to late ’70s at the weekly specialist newspaper, Computing, Guy wrote regular articles about the birth of microcomputers. These inspiring missives told us of an imminent and portentous revolution that would transform everything we did. Many people’s lives were changed by reading these. I was inspired to leave the safe world of accountancy to open one of the first computer stores, Microdigital, in 1978. Many other made similar life changing decisions because of Guy!

As the industry Guy had predicted emerged his influence also increased, initially at Personal Computer World, the first dedicated home computer magazine, then at senior positions in several of the top journals and with a lot of television work. The effect he had was vast and covered a period of over 30 years. He was considered the pre eminent journalist in his field and it is impossible to overstate his influence.

But Guy didn’t just write and broadcast, he did it well. He was clever with an incisive mind, he asked the difficult questions and he analysed the facts in a way that brought so much added value to his output. And of course his experience gave him an unmatched platform with which to work, such as when he predicted greatness when Google first saw the light of day.

And of course there was Guy the person. Always clever, supportive, interesting. I met him at shows and conferences, we had meals and drinks together, he invited me to his home to meet his family. And we chatted on the phone to gossip. Talking to him was always fascinating and educational, he knew far, far more than went into his articles.

To get a better measure of Guy than I could possibly explain you might like to read this blog put together over the last month or so by his friends and colleagues. (Read the comments.)

Also Guy kept a journal of his terminal illness, throughout it you get a real feel for the spirit and the dignity of the man.

It is just so sad that such a vibrant person who was so pivotal to so much is no longer with us. He will be missed.

Dr Henry Edward Roberts

Bruce — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 11:54:10 +0000

Dr Henry Edward Roberts has died at the age of 68. He was truly the father of home computing, the platform on which video gaming is based. His company was Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems (MITS) and in January 1975 his $395 kit computer, the Altair 8800, appeared on the front cover of Popular Electronics. And the word exploded. They could not keep up with demand, cloned imitators appeared, new magazines were published and a young man wrote a version of the programming language BASIC to run on it. His name was Bill Gates.

The main feature of the architecture of this machine was a backplane bus that cards carrying components plugged into, called the S-100 bus, this became the standard for microcomputers until Apple came along. When I opened my computer store Microdigital, in 1978, we offered an S-100 machine.

It is now well over 30 years since the revolution that we now take for granted happened. It was created by individual people and it is sad that time is now catching up on them, what was real events is now rapidly becoming history.

Evony Vs Bruce Everiss. The result

Bruce — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 13:20:47 +0000

Rather than write this myself, it has been written up much better than I could ever do by a professional journalist here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/mar/31/evony-libel-case-bruce-everiss

I have many people to thank.

My legal team in Australia from Marque Lawyers: Damian Sturzaker, Hannah Petrie and Sally Kerridge. They are absolutely brilliant and I unreservedly recommend them to anyone needing legal help in Australia.

My barristers did a fantastic job in court. They are Dr Andrew Bell and Sandy Dawson. A formidable combination.

All this was only possible because of the great friendly advice I received from Danvers Baillieu at Winston & Strawn in London. He has been a pillar throughout these difficult months.

Gillian Phillips, Director of Editorial Legal Services at the Guardian, has been fantastic throughout. Her practical day to day knowledge of being in my position was priceless. She gave me much real world advice.

Mark Gerhard, CEO of Jagex, has been massively supportive throughout. His testimony to the court helped enormously.

The press have been very wary of reporting about anything with pending litigation. However two notable exceptions have been John “wardrox” at Negative Gamer and Michael Thompson at Ars Technica.

Finally I would like to thank the many people who work or who worked on the Evony game who have contacted me, from China and from the West, often at personal risk, to give me the information you have seen reported here.

It has been a very difficult 8 months or so. But all along I could take comfort and strength from the support of those named above and my family. And the knowledge that I had only reported the truth.

My thanks once again.

Nintendo 3DS, the first true 3D console

Bruce — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 12:06:19 +0000

Nintendo were in a bit of a corner really with the sudden spurt of growth in the smartphone market and the associated application stores. From a strategic marketing perspective Nintendo had a desperate need to differentiate themselves from these new competitors. And 3D is that differentiator.

They are saying that the new device is backwards compatible, so it is basically a DS with 3D bolted on. They say you don’t need special glasses, but this is also true of upcoming television technology. The above video is trick 3D using the camera to tell the game about movement. The new machine must do a lot better than that.

I have spoken on here before about layering OLED screen technology to create 3D. (In fact I thought the iPad might use it.) This is eminently achievable and the technology is out there and ultimately inexpensive, the manufacturing process is mainly lithography. The main upgrade for the DS will be the technical ability to produce twice as much video output in order to create the stereoscopic 3D imagery.

Regular readers will know that I think the Dual screen, clamshell layout of the DS will catch on with far more portable devices, it doubles screen acreage for a given device size, and screen acreage is critical. But where Nintendo really need to go is to build in a phone. If they don’t they will eventually lose to those portable gaming devices that offer the extra functionality.

As for 3D, it is looking less and less like a fad in the gaming world. Sony and Nintendo have now both firmly laid down their intent, so that leaves Microsoft dithering and Apple sidelined by their planned obsolescence policy. Time will tell us who is right. The stereoscopic 3D experience is definitely more immersive which is exactly what gaming needs, so it is just a matter of getting the technology and the games right.

Eric Lam speaks – from China

Bruce — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 19:43:13 +0000

Eric Lam Recounts 19 March 2010 China Time

Hi Bruceongames.com and readers,

This is Eric Lam writing. I specifically ask Bruce to let me write this piece of blog. Because I deem this action to be most beneficial for my own personal sake. I’d start by presenting a piece of 2-page statement that I wrote and handed over to the two Chinese policemen who visit my home yesterday. It was written in Chinese and I translated it in English. (I don’t have a scanner so I’d just type it out for now.)

Another note is that I verbally got the policemen’s consent to recount the things that happened yesterday to Bruce. However, it’s my own decision to write this blog on my own and to avoid any biased view from Bruce.

The way I got the policemen’s consent is by saying:

Lam: 我会将今天发生的事情，马上就告诉 Bruce，因为都是事实发生在我身上的。 (I’d tell everything that happened today to Bruce since that’s what happened.)

Policeman A: 你可以这样做. (You can do that.)

Policeman B: 这个是你的自由. (You have the freedom [to do so].)

Statement presented to the policemen are as follows:

标题: 声明书

本人林川在此声明并无主动地以任何方法将本人拍摄之私人和公司照片通过任何直接或间接手段/方法给英国人blogger Bruce.

本人见到了 Bruce blog 上的林川的照片之后，才联络上的。

曾经谈论内容包含以下几点：

1. Evony 是否有木马？

2. Evony 是否有洗黑钱？

3. Evony LLC 公司是否有多过十个人工作。

本人林川的回应如下，对 Bruce 声明过的：

1. 技术上不可以，因为 Flash 有限能力；

2. 是否有洗黑钱，本人无能力回应；

3. 游戏本身不可能少过十个人搞和管理；但是，因为林川早已不在公司工作；Evony LLC 是林川离职之后才有的，所以本人林川不知道具体情况。

林川在和 Bruce 联络上之后的目的，是未了请 Bruce 把林川是 Evony 的其中一个 Boss 的说法改正，因为林川不是 Boss。Bruce 最后相信了林川的话，吧林川的在 Blog 上的说法改了，说是 Manager ( 经理)。

林川答应用往常对此类问题的态度，继续对不产生好处的事情不会做，不会和非执法机构的人交流此事。

林川本人保证上述声明会在未来履行。

19/03/2010

林川 (盖手指章)

Statement presented to the policemen in English translation are as follows:

Title: Statement

I, Eric Lam, didn’t initiate any contact with UK blogger Bruce to hand him my personal photos in any direct or indirect way.

I, Eric Lam, saw Bruce’s blog with my pictures, and then I contacted Bruce.

We talked about the following things [Bruce asked me the following questions]:

1. Does Evony has trojan?

2. Is Evony money laundering?

3. Does Evony LLC has more than 10 workers?

My responses to the questions above were:

1. Technically impossible. Flash has its limitation.

2. I am incapable of answering that. [Meaning I didn't know and I would have had no way of knowing.]

3. There’s no way the game can operate with less than 10 persons. [personal opinion] But I am incapable of knowing since I left the company way before Evony LLC was heard. [fact] And I have no way of knowing how the company’s structured. [fact]

Lam initiated the contact after seeing his own personal photos were published on Bruce’s blog. The purpose of the contact was to correct Bruce’s incorrect statement about Lam being the boss of Evony. I was not the boss. I was [one of] the manager[s] in the company. Bruce changed it agreeably after believing what I said to him.

I agreed to behave as I have always been acting, that is, not to do anything unbeneficial to myself, and not to communicate anything of relating to Evony to anyone else other than law enforcement agencies [with exception of this since I got their consent to recount what happened on 19th March 2010 to Bruce].

Eric Lam promises to honor the above statement in the future.

19/03/2010

Eric Lam (signed and finger printed)

Recounting what happened on 19th March 2010 are as follows:

I write in my first person point of view and try my best to be as objective as possible. I present only the facts and also my personal feelings without passing judgments to the others.

On Friday 19th March 2010, around 11am, my home’s door bell rang. I just got up from my bed because I worked late into the night the day before. The hallway was dark because the light was out. I couldn’t see who’s who through the door viewer. One of the men asked for Eric Lam.

I opened the inner wooden door try to get a clearer view through the outer steel gate which is covered in metal mosquitos’ fence. And the men asked for Eric Lam again. At one time, I thought I saw a familiar face who I thought was my former employer’s personal driver at the far back. I said to him: “Hey. Do I know you at the back?” But he moved away from my sight immediately, so I still couldn’t see who’s who so I decided to shut the door.

I panicked. (Due to a few reasons which I’d prefer not to disclose for my own benefit.)

I looked and I knew that my wife and two daughters were out. I instinctively thought that they might be in danger so I looked everywhere for a phone to call them. But I just couldn’t found my phone due to my dizziness in the morning.

I heard the men outside claiming that they’re from the Qingdao [a city in Shandong province] police force. I guess I knew by then that that has something to do with one of the three things that have to do with my former employer. But first, I must first find out if they’re true policemen since there has been quite a few incidences of fake polices entering the house in the news.

While I was still looking for my phone to call 911 or someone to verify, I heard my wife and kids’ voice at door.

I wasn’t sure what to do but I acted on instinct to open door and try to let them in first.

I opened the door. Three men, my wife, my 2-year old and 1 year old daughters were at door.

I dragged my one year old daughter’s cart in first, and then trying to drag the other two in.

There was no time to explain to them what’s on my mind. I thought to myself.

I tried to shut the door right after but two men started yelling and pull my arms. I told them that I have to find out if they’re real police or not first but one of them stuck his feet in the outer door and slipped in the doorway and said that he’d prefer the door being open that way. I didn’t think that was a good sign at all so I acted on instinct again and I forcefully pushed him away from the door and try to close the outer gate again. But two of them came forth together with one keeping the door open while the other dragging my arm preventing me from having further movement.

My two kids seemed to have sensed hostility and danger and started crying seeing what they’re seeing while my wife yelling at them saying if you’re true policemen why were you consider less about the safety of the children while having a fight here at door. One of the policemen replied in Chinese: “就是冲着这样来的，怎么啦！” (Literally, “We came here for this. What then!” My wife’s personal understanding of what he said is that they’re here to make a scene at my home just so that the children can see it all.)

During the pulling and pushing, my lower end of my right hand sleeve was torn off.

And while I was prevented from further movement, I held them back from entering. I shouted to my wife to call the police and to call 911 (but in fact the Chinese police emergency phone number was 110 so I guess no one could have understood what I meant by saying to call 911).

When they saw my wife picked up the phone and started calling, they started to loose their grip on me and move away from the door. They said it’s better this way and let’s wait till the local police arrive. I closed the doors. They waited outside the doorway.

A uniformed police and a security guard of my apartment complex arrived. I recognized the security guard so I let them all in.

First, I had to clear my residence permit registration formalities with the local policeman (ID025242 with driver batch A3546). For I’m a foreign citizen, I was obligated to report to the local police station where I lived with the apartment owner’s IDs. However, my landlord was a busy man so he hadn’t been available for running the errands with me.

Once that’s cleared, 025242 calls up his superior for the Qingdao policemen’s clearance to conduct their business here. They are, after all, cleared of conducting investigation here. 025242 and I asked for their authorized investigation paperwork and they couldn’t provide any. But we believed they’re true policemen nonetheless.

Because I was in such an emotional state, I asked for a few hours to prepare myself before conducting any further communication. Both 025242 and the two policemen suggested me otherwise. They wanted me right away. I didn’t felt alright about that. If that was not an arrest, what right do they have to ask for my immediate assistance? I asked them what’s that all about? What’s the purpose of the investigation? If not allowed to tell me, I asked if they could at least tell me the nature of the investigation. One of the Qingdao police waved a heavy stake of paper wrapped in transparent plastic holder claiming that’s what he’s about to talk to me.

I asked him if he can show me that. He said that I’d know when I talked to them. He held it up high and claimed that it contained important evidence that’s related to me. I asked him if that’s related to me, why I couldn‘t see them. Or couldn’t he tell me what that is all about?

They continued to refuse my request for freshening up (as I was just out of bed) and my request for preliminary information with regard to their investigation. The back and forth dialogue, which was going nowhere, lasted a few minutes.

But I stood my ground for asking for a few hours before conducting the interview and 025242 went outside again and assumingly talked to his superior again for advice. He came back and talked to the other policemen about me and they told me that we could all meet later. I promised them that I won’t take long and I’d meet them at the local police station to talk. It’s just around the corner of my apartment block.

Once I saw them out and regained my composure. I made calls to Canadian Consulate General and Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office in Guangdong. They were extremely helpful. Their representatives provided extensive legal advises and promised me that they have legal counsel standing by to help me out if in need. They can help me deal with the law enforcement in China on behalf of me. They advise me that I have the right to know the preliminary of the investigation before responding to anything. With my right told, I conjured up my courage to make a call to the local police station.

Unfortunately, the head of the local police office was out to lunch. The lady at the police office asked me to call back at a quarter to three.

I didn’t want to get the Qingdao policemen to wait for too long. But I failed to get the Qingdao policemen’s phone number before they left. I went downstairs to see if they’re still around my apartment complex. But instead, downstairs, I saw the driver of my former employer. It was really him that I had seen back there. I thought to myself.

I waved at him who was sitting outside my apartment building‘s gate and asked him to help me call the Qingdao policemen back.

A moment later, I saw them coming back with a security guard of my former employer. The security guard was a former military soldier in Northern China, as I was told once by Consultant Ma when I was still with the company back in March 2009. “Oh, we meet again.” I smiled at him and thought to myself. (He’s a friendly enough fellow who paid for my drink and snacks during the rest of the long hours of interview by the policemen. He also escorted me to the washroom and waited outside whenever I was out of the sight of the policemen. He’s a very responsible young man.)

I gather the two policemen around and they dismissed the driver and the security guards. I told them whom I’d called and what right I had in China. I insisted and demanded to knew the preliminary first.

They didn’t refuse though failed to acknowledge but I thought I planned to make them feel at ease first. I told them that there were three things that was relating to my former employer. They’re issue A, B, and C. (I will omit A and B intentionally for my own benefit and very probably for my former employer’s benefit as well.)

I tried to show my good will by telling the Qingdao policemen the following.

I watched police movies a lot and once wanted to be a police myself and even applied to become a Commissioner of Police in Hongkong passing two rounds of interview before I decided to come back to China for my career and to explore business opportunity. I hoped they could understand my respect for their line of duty, my willingness to cooperate and I was sure they weren’t intended to make a scene back there. (I thought to myself that it was just unprofessional police academy training, at most. The ugly scene could have been prevented simply by bringing my apartment complex security guard along when they rang my door bell. I could have saved my shirt, to say the least, if not frightened my wife, kids, and the neighbor. Right. Beside writing this piece tonight, I had spent my day talking to the neighbors about, oddly, my financial stability. All of them started to gossip about this already thinking that it was some mafia loan shark who wanted to get a piece of me for they could hardly believe those were the act of policemen. But I told them it was just misunderstanding. Apparently, the last thing I wanted to do is to express my own fear and alarm them further.)

For issue A: I thought it was over and I doubt if it’s anything to do with it. But I’m preparing to get it over with nonetheless because I didn’t do anything wrong. It was merely an unfortunately misunderstanding if anything. (Sorry readers for being cryptic. But just bear with me till issue C.)

For issue B: I thought I had an agreement indirectly with someone through a personal assistant that I shouldn’t be talking to them anymore as if “I’ve never known them.” (Sorry again for being cryptic here. It’s just for my own good.)

For issue C: Apparently, I couldn’t pretend that I didn’t know anything about Bruce’s blog. So if that’s what it was all about, I’m more than willing to talk about it to the best of my knowledge. The only reason preventing me from contacting the right persons to talk about issue C was due to issue B’s promise. So, I’m glad to talk to a third party, especially law enforcement.

I played my part to be more than open to clear the air and the police signaled that what he’s holding in his hand was all about Bruce’s blog.

I signed with relieve and divulged what I knew about Bruce and the blog. Apart from the statement that I wrote above, which was all true and was not forced upon to write (if you readers have speculated). I told them a lot more about what had happened in details so that they could feel surer about my statement being true. We sat in the apartment complex playground for a long time and they listen and sometimes barge in with dissatisfaction of what I said while they couldn’t be clear of what they wanted to ask for obvious reasons: that’s how policemen were trained to talk to suspects. They cannot let the suspect know what they know or don’t know while they want to know as much and ask as many relevant questions as they could. So the back and forth dialogue went longer than it could have been due to the nature of the conversation. Eventually, after much misunderstanding and even yelling at times due to frustration on both sides, they said they’re temporarily satisfied with my side of the story and went over to my apartment complex’s security room to get a written statements.

The official written statement contains more information than the above statement. The official statement was supposedly to be read by the police authority only. They requested me to write the above statement on my own. I thought it must be for someone else’s eyes then. To whom I have no way of knowing who would eventually read it. But I’d hope it can reach the right person. But just in case it couldn’t, I’m hoping by posting here, the content of my hand written statement can have a chance to meet his/her eyes.

I felt that I was one the key suspects of providing information to Bruce. I felt that there was no way of denying the facts that the photos were mine. So I was very clear about how all it went. What I said to the policemen went most unrecorded due to technicality, which I thought the policemen were not internet savvy enough to understand what I told them but were too shy to admit.

I knew Bruce’s attack on Evony all alone. But it was really none of my business because I left the company for a long time. There’s hundreds and thousands of Eric Lam out there and for the obvious speculative nature of those claims were, I didn’t think it was worth my time to act upon it. Besides, the rumors out there got many of my facts wrong. (For example, I corrected Bruce yesterday, again, that I wasn’t living in Canada. I’ve been living mostly in China since 2005.) And most importantly of all, issue B is at stake and I was obligated on two ends not to talk about this (sorry for being cryptic). But I became acutely aware of Bruce’s blog once my personal photos were up. After two to three blogs were out containing my photos, I decided to reach out to Bruce to correct one perhaps minute to many others but fairly substantial claims against me.

I was not the owner of Evony.

That’s it.

It’s affecting my life and work on many ends so I had to stopped it.

I would have been honored and glad if I was really one of the owners simply because it was the first game that’s been created by Chinese and gone out to make it big in the English-speaking audience market. But unfortunately, I wasn’t the owner. And it was really getting on my nerve from too many ends. I had to stop the source from continuing spread the untrue info that’s affecting my life.

I still don’t know how Bruce got a hold of my photos and I didn’t bother to ask neither because they would have been publicly available online as they were sent to many of my co-workers in the company. I was THE photographer and I advocated company life on my photo blog. Hundreds and hundreds of workers come-and-gone could have tipped off Bruce about the whereabouts of the photos. Or it could simply been have Bruce’s own might in power searching through Google.

If you Google eric lam , my photo gallery result comes up first. (That’s the part I thought the policemen failed to grasp what I said.)

I wouldn’t have trusted Bruce even he told me the way he got the photos so I didn’t bother to ask. It was simply my mistake to have not locked that part of the photo gallery sooner. I thought Bruce’s blog writing was AdSense ad driven. I thought he was driven by greed for readership and AdSense income.

And you bet. I was a greedy person and so I assumed everyone else’s so.

I did everything for the benefit of profiting for myself. I have stopped donating and volunteering for a long time. And I have stopped doing things that’s unbeneficial to my ends for a long time. And I’ve stopped doing all random act of kindness that I used to do except giving a few dollars to the wondering singers and performers on the streets.

The last thing I wanted to do is to provide petty information to Bruce’s blog for fighting so-called justice in his eyes.

I asked Bruce how much he got for the AdSense, he said it’s petty money that could hardly cover his monthly utility bill. So I thought to myself what an idealistic and unworldly man he was, fighting for justice of the public with flimsy information. (Of course, I didn’t tell him that in his face since I care less about others’ dealing as long as my life’s not at stake.)

Besides, half of my life was in the east and other half been in the west. I think it’s just a joke what Bruce was writing about. It wouldn’t have been so much an issue in China anyway even if they’re true.

Now, I know you’re happy now knowing the Eric Lam guy is as bad as you might have imagined. But I really don’t care as long as you’re not in my life.

The truth is: my neighbors and the Shandong policemen are in my life. Someone will continue to exist in my life no matter what, simply because he/she thought I knew too much. They’re all part of my life. They’re as much as my wife and kids are in my life.

So **** you, Bruce, and all the other rumors and info tippers (if you’re even really reading this at all…), as well as you, supporters and other commenters/readers of Bruce’s blog.

You don’t care what’s happening to me as much as I don’t care half about what’s happening to you. So now you know what’s happening to me and please show yourself and at least stand up like a man like Bruce. Show yourselves so that I don’t become the fall guy who got his sleeve torn off right after getting out of my bed, and so that I don’t become the man who forever feeling regretful of not able to protect my baby girls enough from imprinting their fragile hearts with the ugly scene.

Last but not least, **** myself for not being able to add a password on the photo gallery sooner. Or better yet, might as well ****ed my photography hobby.

For the sake of me, I specifically ask Bruce to pull off the latest blog about the things that happened on 19th that god knows who tipped him off. I decided to write this accord on my own and let you all know that I’m a real person and I’m in real trouble. So spare me your endless analysis of the latest evony gossips and freedom of speech point of view. Get a life and even play some evony for god sake.

I will continue to fight for my own peace if you anyone out there decide that you have more to say to me, I suggest you to email me at eric@clickbankcsv.com where my own business endeavor is undergoing besides consulting for a few game companies on a part-time basis.

Or better yet, subscribe to my service at ClickBank Products Data CSV at http://www.clickbankcsv.com . I’d always be glad to chat with my customers. My men at ClickbankCSV will greet you with nice things to say. Just leave them your phone number, and contact methods, and I’d get back to you right away during my waking hours.

Eric Lam

Some facts about the game thieves

Bruce — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 08:48:08 +0000

I have written on here many times before about the way the internet has facilitated an orgy of stealing unprecedented in the history of mankind. Many tens of millions of people are stealing many billions of dollars worth of other people’s property every month in the form of digital content. And the main reason this is happening is that the chance of being brought to account for this stealing is very close to zero.

The damage this does is massive. If people don’t receive payment for their work then they don’t have a job. I have worked at companies massively impacted by piracy so I have personal experience of the trauma and suffering this brings. But the thieves are in total denial of the harm they cause. They even throw their toys out of the pram when the owners of this property try to protect it from theft.

In the game industry we have seen theft rates of over 90% on traditional boxed retail PC games, so the publishers have cut back massively on making them as any visit to a video game store will show you. Instead the PC as a platform is now reduced to supporting games that can be financed by non retail business models. This means casual games and MMOs that use micropayments and subscriptions. The glory days of the PC blockbuster are over.

Another game platform destroyed as a viable target to publish on because of the thieves is the Nintendo DS. There are about 130 million of these in the world. Very similar to the number of Wiis, 360s and PS3s all combined. So the DS should be an exceedingly popular platform to develop and publish games for. But it isn’t because the vast majority of DS owners just steal what they want over the internet.

Now an economics firm, TERA Consultants, has quantified the damage done. It could cost European countries 1.2million jobs and 240billion euros (£215billion) by 2015. In the UK we could lose up a quarter of a million jobs by 2015. And that last year the creative industries here suffered losses of 1.4billion euros because of online stealing.

Of course the thieves are in denial. They cannot see why a person should be paid for their work. They think that access to the internet is a human right and that this means that stealing anything they want off the internet is also their human right. But the person who has done the work has no rights.

Obviously something has to be done or we face a cultural desert. There will be no income for the creative industries and they will disappear. The anarchists among the thieves applaud this, they think that new structures will replace the old. But they miss the vital point that people must be paid for their work, otherwise they won’t eat and won’t have a roof over their heads.

Because the distribution mechanism the thieves use to facilitate their stealing is peer to peer networks, the only people in a position to actually do anything positive are the Internet Service Providers. So Western countries are introducing laws that force the ISPs to do just that. This is the only solution and it is desperately needed. Amazingly the thieves are screaming with rage about this. It is unbelievable that they have the effrontery to demand a carte blanche to steal. But they do.

Working in the video game industry and seeing people enthusiasm to steal, no matter how much harm it does to others, has done a lot to destroy my faith in human nature. These thieves are totally contemptible and I find it amazing that their conscience lets them sleep at night.

Alice, revolution or fad?

Bruce — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 06:39:46 +0000

The guys that do the marketing for the big Hollywood studios know what they are doing, the games industry is in the dark ages by comparison. And movies have suddenly found a great strategic advantage over other entertainment media. One that is more than working. It is packing them in.

Stereoscopic 3D using polarising glasses is the hottest thing since the talkies. Avatar, which I have already written about, is the biggest grossing film in history. Yet now Alice in Wonderland out grossed Avatar in its first UK weekend. Cleverly Alice leverages the Johnny Depp brand to appeal to a different demographic to Avatar, so my wife liked it.

Obviously part of 3D is hype, marketing and the usual human/lemming behaviour. But part of it is also a step change in the immersive experience. The ability to suspend disbelief yet further.

Before Alice screened they showed a whole pile of trailers. All for blockbuster films and all 3D. How to Train your Dragon, Shrek Forever After and Toy Story 3 are destined to be surefire hits. It is a new golden age for the movie industry. The only caveat is that these are all Computer Generated Imagery (CGI) films. It will be impressive when Hollywood delivers a non CGI 3D blockbuster.

Whilst the movie industry has a lead in this jump to 3D it will not be for long, TV manufacturing and broadcasting are both heavily committed to it. Televisions are a commodity product, a rectangle of moving image. In recent times manufacturers have tried to use size as a differentiator. But you can only go so far. So currently in the market they are using thinness, which is not the sexiest of USPs. This makes 3D a very tempting technology to help maintain manufacturing margins. So the manufacturers are jumping in with both feet. Soon the market will be flooded with 3D sets and all those big flat screens sold over the last few years will be obsolete.

Time now for a brief technical interlude. Stereoscopic 3D works by fooling the brain. To do this it feeds a different image to the left eye and to the right eye. This is why you need to wear polarised glasses in the cinema, each lens is polarised in a different direction to only let through the right imagery for its eye. So the cinema needs to project twice as much onto the screen to maintain the same quality as 2D films. This is why the whole industry has invested a fortune in re-equipping.

Which brings us to video games. I reported on 3D gaming last year and again earlier this year. It definitely provides a compelling experience. But it requires us to put twice as much information on the screen if everything else about the game remains the same. But our current generation of consoles just don’t have the spare capacity, they are already working at full stretch to deliver the current crop of 2D games. Moving to HD was a big jump for the gaming industry and 3D is yet another big jump without much of a breathing space in between.

So every PS3 and 360 game developer now has a choice. Either create spectacular 2D graphics or go 3D with a lesser graphics quality. There is only so much processing power available and they have to decide what to use it on. This puts us a long way behind the movie industry who have already re-equipped to deliver the highest quality images and 3D at the same time. We are going to have to wait for PS4 and Xbox 720 to really do 3D properly.

Sony and Microsoft have different attitudes to 3D. It looks like Sony are betting the company on 3D. Every division and every product that can embrace it is doing so, big style. Televisions, movies, camcorders and of course, video games. This summer Sony are releasing a systems update for the PS3 to optimise it for 3D games. This can’t add in the power necessary to do the job properly, but it is a viable stopgap. If 3D continues to take off in the public perceptions this could give Sony a big strategic advantage.

Microsoft’s attitude is far more wait and see. They obviously feel either that 3D is a fad or that current technology isn’t up to the job of doing it justice. Or maybe even they are so tied up with Natal that they simply don’t have the resources necessary to do 3D. It is a big nuisance that two paradigm shifters like 3D and gesture interfaces should come along at the same time.

So let’s look at what this all means. If 3D really is our future then it is advantage Sony, in a big way. 3D is embedded throughout the corporation. If 3D is a fad then it is advantage Microsoft, they won’t have wasted resources chasing a rainbow. What is absolutely for sure is that it has accelerated the release of the next generation of platforms. We suddenly need the extra horsepower that Moore’s law always delivers for us in new machines.

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